Gela waited and hoped for his mother to keep talking, which she did:
"If it's a matter of detail, and taste, you should add some curry from India, or fresh ginger from the Han area to make a really good soup. Once the meat is cooked, it should be placed on a silver plate, and the plate should be put on a wooden board, which should be painted gold."
Gela was now holding his breath; maybe his mother was about to remember the secret of her origins. Maybe she knew all along, but had waited until now to tell him.
Sangdan sighed: "today, the old ways are gone. We have all turned into savages. Savages … savages," she mumbled the word several times, and Gela saw, with pain in his heart, that in the space between her words, her eyes had misted over once more. But just as fast, she pulled herself back into her lucid state.
"Good child. The meat is done, take it and go. Go see your friend," she said. Standing up, she saw her son out the door.
Eleven
Ten miles of schlepping later, Gela made it to Shuajingsi with the venison mounted on his back.
He didn't need to ask for directions to the hospital; he could tell exactly where it was with just his nose; during that year when life became one prolonged wander, his sense of smell had become as sharp as a dog's. This skill was all the more useful because he couldn't read, meaning that town street signs were of no help to him. He also knew he would get very little help from the people who lived in the towns, who were insufferably arrogant in their dealings with village people, considering them savages, even though they themselves lived surrounded by villages and the wilderness just beyond the fragile limits of their semi-urban islands. For this reason, Gela usually avoided talking with town people, much less asking them for help. Anyway, the hospital was always one of the easiest places in any town to sniff out. The most palpable defining smell of any hospital was the smell of disinfectant, while the main abstract smell of a hospital was the smell of death. Besides hospitals, other places you might find in a town that had equally obvious smells, both palpable and abstract, included restaurants and gas stations.
When Gela walked in through the hospital doors, he was informed that the boy who had been injured by a firecracker had come in the previous evening to have his wound bandaged, but that he'd left with his family immediately after. Dusk was already falling by the time Gela left the hospital. He felt a little hungry, so he followed his talented nose to a nearby restaurant, the set-up of which was identical to all the other restaurants he had been to in his life, which added up to a good number. When it comes to restaurants, the main palpable smell is the smell of slop water. The abstract smell of a restaurant is the smell of world-weariness, the kind of weariness that promises there will be no tomorrow once today is done. Inside the restaurant there were a few greasy tables, a window where customers buy tickets for their order, another window where customers collect their order, a counter with cold dishes and pastries laid out, and a sliding window, this one made of glass, on which was written a menu and price list, behind which a man in a blue apron was napping on a stool. Gela knocked on the window, waking the man with a start. Gela smiled at him. The man pushed the window open, yawning as he did so. Gela's hands were as deft as his eyes were quick; he reached out and grabbed a stewed ox tongue. A delayed look of surprise dawned on the man's face, but before he'd got the yawn out his mouth, before he could even move his hand, he had to watch as Gela reached out again and grabbed two dumplings right from under his nose. Food in hand, Gela turned to make his escape, knocking over a stool on his way out. Too late, the man chased him to the door with a kitchen knife in his hand and a howl in his throat, but Gela was gone, vanished into the deserted night-time street scene.
Gela didn't stop running until he reached the edge of town. Then, he slowed his pace and dug into the fruits of his enterprise, a sly little smile playing on his lips between bites. This vagrant Gela, and the Gela who was stuck in Ji village, stagnating, were two very different young men. Gela the vagrant, who could draw on a wealth of experience from the life of the road and the streets, was back. That is to say, Gela the stagnant, who was bored stupid by life in Ji village, had rediscovered elation—the elation of a tramp enjoying the happiest moment of his day. He walked along the road on light feet. He heard the tap of his feet on the ground as he watched the stars jump out from behind the black screen of night, one after another. A road like this could stretch on forever, to the paradise of starlight in the sky, against which each star looks as if stuffed with gems and precious rocks. Gela surely would have kept walking, leaving the narrow, impoverished, soul-choking world of Ji village behind forever, If only it weren't for the fact that Bunny was hurt. There was also the present of venison that he hadn't yet delivered, and his mother, whom he'd only ever known as a silly and muddled woman, but had just now begun to show signs that she was awakening from her stupor. She had even done some of the things a real mother would do, like teaching him things.
The whole village was asleep when Gela arrived. He looked up at Enbo's dark window, and thought to himself: "little brother Bunny, tomorrow I'll come bring you some fresh venison … whoever killed this deer … that man must be my father, I know it."
It took Gela a long time to fall asleep that night. At this juncture in time, all signs seemed to indicate that this year would be a significant one. The man who had hidden in the background for all these years had suddenly brought venison to their house, while Sangdan was putting out the first buds of a mental awakening. Gela's dreams were spent pondering such things.
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